


and up she rises

by callunavulgari



Series: The Drunken Whaler [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Dark, F/F, F/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Necromancy, Sibling Incest, Sirens, Stockholm Syndrome, Temporary Character Death, Underwater World, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-23
Updated: 2013-05-23
Packaged: 2017-12-12 17:49:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/814294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“The house is a birdcage, Dirk,” you tell him. You gesture at the sky and the sea; you grin. “This is freedom.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	and up she rises

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [а потом ещё выше ('and up she rises' by callunavulgari)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1010584) by [Mr_Scapegrace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mr_Scapegrace/pseuds/Mr_Scapegrace)



> This got a lot bigger than I thought it would. Incidentally, it also got a lot weirder. The amount of research that I had to do on fish/shark genitalia for the OCD portion of my brain going 'everything must be accurate!' was slightly mortifying. The fic originally had an alternate ending, but I took it out since it was slightly too fluffy for it to mesh well with the rest of the fic. Title is taken from the song [The Drunken Whaler](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVlVyi9rKDo) which is one of the songs on the playlist that inspired this fic.

Dirk tells you that the two of you are the last of your kind—that the age of the humans is long past—that you are two anomalies living amongst monsters.

You’ve never quite believed him.  
  
“How are we here then?” you ask, your voice still high and sweet with youth. It quavers, taut like the bowstrings of the ancient violin in your living room. You gesture at the dwelling around you—at the books and the random weapons—your fortress of concrete. “What is all this, if we were the last?” you ask, your voice shrill as a scream.  
  
He looks at you over the tops of his glasses and your heart thumps desperately in your chest when he gathers you to him, limbs awkward and unsure. He attempts to stroke your hair, but his fingers get caught in the tangles. After another moment, he stops.  
  
“We had parents,” you whisper, so much the frightened little girl. Only you have no mother whose skirts you could cling to, you never have.  
  
He shrugs. “We did,” he concedes. “And before us, they were the last.”  
  
You press your face to his shirt and breathe in the smell of him. You cry.  
  
You are twelve years old and you have never left your fortress of concrete.  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
You drown yourself in your mother’s booze.  
  
You try to play her violin and snap one of the strings.  
  
You cry.  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
Your days are quiet, uneventful. You grow vegetables from seeds left to you from parents you have never seen, planting them in a square of sunlight at the very center of your fortress.  
  
It is a very small courtyard, full of nothing but soil for plants and a small fountain in the shape of a naked man. Dirk used to sit beside you as you planted and watered the seeds, laughing at the water flowing from the statues broken cock. Nowadays it is only you in the garden, drunkenly burbling at tomatoes and pumpkins—singing songs to help them grow.  
  
When the garden has been tended to, you read your mother’s books and try not to falter over the words that weave about the page, your eyesight gone hazy from the drink. You wonder what it is that killed them; not your parents, but the other humans.  
  
Dirk says that it was the monsters, but you’ve never been outside the walls, never opened the steel door at the front of your home, never joined him on his excursions up to the roof. There may be no monsters.  
  
When you tell him this, he frowns at you and takes your hand—dragging you up the flight of stairs to get to your roof.  
  
Outside, you think, is very bright.  
  
It’s nothing like your square of sunlight—the sun beats down on your bare shoulders and you breathe in the sea air for the first time, though you don’t yet know what makes the air so salty.  
  
You go down on your knees and crawl closer to the edge. When you peer over it, the breath catches in your throat, because the world stretches as far as the eye can see, blue and beautiful.  
  
You are surrounded on all sides by water, waves that slap against the rocks below.  
  
“I don’t see any monsters,” you tell him, huffing when it becomes apparent that no demon creature is going to swoop down on you from above.  
  
“Just wait,” he tells you, staring out at the sea.  
  
For a time, nothing happens. You sit there, legs burning from the concrete beneath you and watch, making no move to get up. The burn is a sweet pain.  
  
Just when you’re ready to call his bluff, something breaks the surface of the waves.  
  
It’s big, whatever it is, and brilliantly white. At first you think it’s a whale, one of the creatures you’ve read about in your mothers library. You blink and another great white _thing_ breaks the surface.  
  
It takes you entirely too long to realize that they’re tentacles—giant weaving tentacles, part of a creature much bigger, like the kracken’s from sailors tales. You can almost make out a tiny spot next to it, but when you blink, it is gone.  
  
“Do you believe me now?” Dirk asks you, oddly gentle.  
  
You nod and wonder what it is that killed them—the humans—the monsters or the endless ocean.  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
You go to the roof with Dirk more often after that, sometimes just reclining next to him with a martini in hand, your shoulders slowly going red and freckled in the sun. Other times you spar with him, the way you used to in the big open room near your garden. You never use your guns when the two of you spar, just the katanas and long swords that your father left you.  
  
Occasionally, you even venture up without him—when he is still asleep or working on some new invention. You read, mostly, but sometimes you’ll watch and see if you can spot any other monsters.  
  
There are bird creatures with long talons and sharp beaks that you have to hide from when they swoop overhead. There’s the kracken in the sea and other creatures—a seahorse larger than you are with fangs that are visible even so far above it, giant crabs and turtles languishing in the water, and circling sharks the size of your home.  
  
Rarer still are the dragons. They prefer the night, more dangerous than the bird creatures by far, dribbling fire from their great gaping maws as they makes feasts of the creatures below. You can always smell them coming—ash, embers, and smoke polluting the wind.  
  
After the first night you see one, you start to retreat inside when you smell them coming.  
  
You stick to going outside in the daylight more often after that.  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
You are sixteen years old when you kiss your brother.  
  
It’s more out of curiosity than anything, that knowledge sitting in your head that the two of you are the very last of your species and that before that, your mother and father were the last before they created the two of you.  
  
You’ve never talked about it, about the unspoken duty the two of you have had thrust upon you. The books in the library have tales like yours—tales of loneliness and desperation, of two humans left behind, and the need to birth infants—some instinctual drive to carry on the species.  
  
Dirk doesn’t think of it much, and you don’t think he likes the idea of bringing other children into the world to live lives like yours. But you think about it, before and after you get your first period. You think about it when you read the books on reproduction that Dirk dumps in your lap while you’re sobbing because you think you might be dying. You have to think about it, because someday, you’re going to have to either be a mother or let the human race die with the two of you.  
  
But more than that, you’re lonely. You miss sleeping in bed with your brother, curled up as storms raged around you. You miss the closeness of _before_ —before Dirk had retreated to a room of his own when his cock started to stiffen each morning. You hadn’t minded then, but you’d been young and hadn’t understood yet what it meant.  
  
So the afternoon the two of you turn sixteen, you kiss him.  
  
You crawl into his lap and kiss all over his face, your breath stinking of alcohol already and your heart sick with emotion.  
  
“We can’t,” he says, pulling away from your lips, but not your embrace.  
  
You glare at him. “Why not?” you ask, palming the space between you to feel the hardening of his dick. He shivers and gives a little gasp against your neck.  
  
“We’re twins,” he breathes, and it isn’t like him for his voice to be clogged with emotion. It isn’t like him to squirm against you, trying to get closer as much as he tries to retreat.  
  
“So were our parents,” you whisper, kissing his lips again, chaste and dry. “We’re the only ones left.”  
  
  
His words in your mouth, you think, remembering when you were twelve years old and still believed—before he’d shown you the monsters and the sea.  
  
When you kiss him again, he kisses you back, a pained noise deep in his throat as the fight goes out of him.  
  
Your coupling is not one for the books. It isn’t romantic or particularly sexy. It is awkward and desperate, his dick inside you as the two of you cling together, snot and tears smeared all over each other’s faces. When he kisses you, it tastes like salt.  
  
After, when you’re lying there in his arms, his come leaking out of you, you think that it shouldn’t have been like this. First times being special is an outdated custom belonging to a culture with more than one option, so that isn’t what bothers you. It’s that even now that you’ve been as close as two people can get, you don’t feel any closer to him for it.  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
The next few times that you’re together, it goes better.  
  
It becomes something that the two of you do to pass the time, same as sparring and reading books to each other. It’s better, but even after a dozen times, he still does it the same way that he does everything else with you—awkwardly, cautiously, and nearly monotonous.  
  
You don’t bring it up.  
  
You ride him when you’re horny, using his dick like a toy and forgetting that this is supposed to be something that brings the two of you closer together. You use him and when all is said and done, when you’ve come half a dozen times and wrung an insubstantial one out of him, you hate yourself for it. You cry and you apologize while he strokes your hair with too awkward fingers.  
  
“It’s okay, Roxy,” he shrugs, pressing a kiss to your skull before getting up to fetch a wet towel for the both of you. He always cleans you off after, wiping spunk and sweat from between your thighs until you’re clean again.  
  
He loves you, you know, but it’s not the way you want him to.  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
There comes a time when you grow curious, when you start looking at that steel door with more than just trepidation. You know what lies outside of it—jagged rocks and gull shit—but more than that, the edge of the sea. You wonder if the sea would come rushing in if you should open it, if the waves would slap your thighs, the ocean spray making your home smell of salt.  
  
You watch the waters, calculating the pull of the tide, and one day, when Dirk is busy with Sawtooth and you’ve had too much to drink, you take the handle of the door and you pull.  
  
You were right about the rocks and the gull shit, but you were wrong about the sea slapping against your legs. The edge of the water is farther down than you thought it was and you spend half an hour tottering your way down the rocks, making sure to wedge a rock against the door so it doesn't shut you out.  
  
The sea smells more strongly up close—the same scent of salt spray and brine that you smelled on the roof, but a hundred times more intense.  
  
You dip a toe into the water and shiver in pleasant surprise. The water is as warm as your baths, so you venture closer, carefully picking your way forward until the water is up to your calves.  
  
You set yourself down onto a dry rock, kicking at the surf. A small crab creeps out of it—not unlike its larger brothers, but smaller than your big toe. You watch it skitter onto a rock, picking at a bit of algae. You poke it, giggling when it clicks its little pincers at you.  
  
You sit there, reclining back on your hands and staring up at the towering structure of your fortress, alone with your thoughts until the tide starts to come back in, creeping up your legs until you’re forced to retreat.  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
After that first time, you start venturing outside more and more often—playing with the mussels and tiny crabs on the rocks. You bring books sometimes, the same ones you’ve read dozens of times.  
  
It’s pleasant in a way that being on the roof isn’t; it takes you weeks to realize that the feeling is freedom. Freedom from Dirk and your fortress and even your fate, even if you are still pinned in on all sides by water.  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
Dirk catches you, of course. You’re down by the little shoreline, toeing the water and sunning yourself on one of the rocks when you hear him shout. There’s only a scant amount of distance between you and the door, easy enough to navigate quickly if you’re sober, but it still surprises you when you turn and he’s already beside you.  
  
Even with the shades obscuring his eyes his panic is easily visible—his lips clenched and his balled up fists white knuckled.  
  
“What are you doing?” he shouts, flinging his arms in the air and nearly sending you over backwards. He catches hold of your arm and you wince at how tight his grip is. It isn’t like him to be so emotional, you think, giggling when he shakes you like a rag doll.  
  
“I wanted to feel free,” you laugh, reeling when he abruptly lets you go.  
  
“And you couldn’t do that _in the house_?” he half-shouts. His shoulders are shaking and you think that were this another day, you would be concerned.  
  
You laugh at him, dizzy from the drink, the sun, and the churning emotion in your gut. You think you may vomit. “The house is a birdcage, Dirk,” you tell him. You gesture at the sky and the sea and grin. “This is freedom.”  
  
He frowns at you, fists trembling at his sides. “This,” he tells you in a whisper. “Is a death trap, and you’re taking the bait.”  
  
“I can handle myself, I don’t need you. I’m careful. I’ve been coming out here for weeks, Dirk, and I’m not dead yet. I’ll be fine.”  
  
A shudder goes through him and his fists tighten—for a moment you think he might punch you, but all at once, the fight goes out of him. His shoulders slump and he looks around you, at the little crabs retreating back into the water at his outburst, at the waves lapping at the rocks, and the blue sky above.  
  
“You don’t even have a weapon with you,” he whispers.  
  
You take his hand in yours. “I’ll bring one from now on,” you tell him. “Promise.”  
  
He looks at you and you try not to notice the way his lip trembles. “And you have to tell me when you come out here—” he holds a finger up to your mouth when you start to protest. “—I won’t come with you, if you don’t want. But I want to know.”  
  
Wordlessly, you nod.  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
And you do take a weapon with you—a gun or a sword or one of the little daggers from around the house, but it doesn’t matter.  
  
You still aren’t careful enough.  
  
(And you never learned how to swim.)  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
At first, you think that you’ve twisted your ankle on a rock—tripped and taken a tumble because there’s too much liquor in your bloodstream. All that matters is the swirl of water around you, the blood from where you smacked your skull up against a rock, and trying to get a foothold before the current gets a better hold on you.  
  
Your feet kick uselessly, your limbs flailing, and all at once you realize how stupid it was, coming out here but never learning how to swim.  
  
You’re still flailing when you notice movement in the water and then there’s a pair of eyes before you, not the orange of Dirk’s, but a strangely pink color similar to your own. In one grand, shining moment of stupidity, you think that it’s your mother, come to save you. That she hasn’t been dead all this time and now she’s back, just in time to save you from the clutch of the ocean. You’ve already stretched your hand toward the eyes when you notice the rest of the creature—the inky dark braids and the gaping maw full of needle-sharp teeth.  
  
You scream, you think, because water rushes into your mouth and you choke on it, sputtering and sinking. You feel something cold grab a hold of your arm and you shudder, kicking as hard as you can.  
  
It’s no use, the creature has you in it’s grip, and even if you could get your body to properly cooperate, it isn’t letting you go.  
  
You still fight it, but it isn’t enough—Dirk’s katana is back on the rocks and already your vision is going grey around the edges, the strength leaching out of your limbs.  
  
You think the creature might be laughing at you as you slowly go still, but you can’t bring yourself to care.  
  
Everything goes dark.  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
The next thing you’re aware of is a pair of lips on yours—cold and almost waxy, nothing like Dirk’s.  
  
When you open your eyes, you have to blink for a moment before you realize why they hurt—why your skin feels wet and your body cold. You’ve never been underwater before, you think, and then everything comes back to you.  
  
You flail, gasping in water that doesn’t choke you going down. The fact that you aren’t drowning doesn’t stop the panic from clawing up your chest and you gasp again desperately, trying to find air when there is none, feeling the rush of water against your tongue.  
  
“I’d cut that right out, little anemone,” a voice purrs into your ear as something catches a hold of you all over again, holding you down against the sandbed. “You already gone and died once, and even I got limits.”  
  
You go still only when you feel sharp teeth graze the back of your neck. You want to ask why you’re alive, how you’re breathing water—you want to see the creature behind you, but more importantly, you don’t want to be dead.  
  
“Gave you the kiss of life, I did. Right smack dab on those hot little fishlips o’ yours.”  
  
Your pulse is starting to slow now, your heart becoming less and less likely to beat out of your chest. You try to crane your head around, but teeth prick at your neck, and the creature gives you a little warning smack.  
  
“What did I just say, fishbait? You think I’m talkin’ for the halibut?”  
  
You grit your teeth. “Doesn’t mean much when you’re the one who drowned me,” you hiss, surprised when the words don’t just come out as bubbles. The creature laughs and sets its chin on your shoulder.  
  
“You got some fight in you, little tuna,” it laughs, blowing bubbles against your hair.  
  
“I have a name,” you spit out.  
  
“Yeah, you got a name, same as I got mine. But I don’t know it yet, do I now?” You feel the creature’s lips curve into a smile against your shoulder.  
  
“Why don’t you tell me yours first?” you say, squirming in its hold. Its a she, you think, its voice weirdly melodic, but distinctly feminine.  
  
The creature laughs again, but you can almost feel her give into you. “The name’s Meenah,” she says. “Queen of the fishy people down below.”  
  
Her head bobs a little, as if she’s giving you a mocking little nod instead of a curtsy. “That’s how I brought you back, my little landglubber. The kiss of life is mine to give, as is my right, and I chose to push all that life right back into your squishy little skin instead of gobblin’ it all up.”  
  
She pauses and you feel something flutter against the side of your throat—gills, you realize. “And you,” she continues, drawing out all the vowels in that last word. “Are somethin’ that ain't supposed to exist anymore, wanna tell me why that is?”  
  
Your throat closes up and a moment passes before she prods you with something sharp. “Be quick 'bout it, starfish. I don’t got a lot of patience.”  
  
“My name’s Roxy,” you bite out. “And—”  
  
You falter for a moment, unsure if you should mention Dirk. She prods you again and you elbow her back blindly, pleased when you hear her grunt. “I’m the last human alive,” you finish.  
  
She snorts, disbelieving. “The humans went all belly up a fuckin' eon ago, what makes little you so special?”  
  
“My mom,” you say. Your head hurts. Now that the adrenaline is fading, you’re starting to remember that you’ve got one hell of a hangover. “She left me a house. Food, water, clothing.”  
  
The fish girl scoffs at you. “And how’d she survive the waters?”  
  
“I don’t know,” you shrug. “Now if you aren’t gonna skewer me, you wanna let me go? I bruise easy.”  
  
At first, her grip just tightens, but after a moment she lets go, moving far enough away that you finally have room to turn.  
  
She... isn’t what you expected. You don’t know what you it is that you _did_ expect, really, but whatever it was this isn’t it.  
  
At first glance, she looks human enough. Her skin’s dark, as if carved from obsidian—her face human enough—angular with a pointed chin and nose, but rounded cheeks like a little girls. Her eyes are a darker pink than yours, the dark pupils so large that all you can see of the pink irises is a thin band. Her hair floats out behind her, two inky dark braids, long enough that she could probably choke you with them. The teeth you recognize from before, snaggle toothed and wicked sharp like one of the deep, deep sea fishes. You wonder if her jaw comes unhinged when she opens her mouth.  
  
Shoulders are smooth and normal enough, both those and her arms well-muscled. There’s gold on almost every inch of her—bangles around her wrists, pearls and golden chains wound around her neck, rings in her ears, nose, and eyebrows. They distract you for a moment from the fact that her chest is bare—from the slight swell of her small breasts and wide, dark nipples.  
  
But that’s where the similarities end. The gills on the sides of her neck and ribcage flutter with every breath she takes, a bright pink that’s jarring against the darkness of her skin. There are dark gray fins along her forearms, edged with a pale pink. The rest of her tail is equally dark, zigzagged with stripes, strong and sleek like a sharks, the underbelly a gray just a shade lighter than the rest.  
  
“You’re a mermaid,” you say with surprise, clutching a hand to your chest.  
  
She bares her teeth at you. “Dat’s a terrible name, one that shoulda died with you humans. If you gotta use derogatory human terms, least ya can do is use siren. They had the right idea in dat, least as far as that we sing and ate people.”  
  
You blink at her.  
  
She just flashes her teeth at you in something that might even be a grin.  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
You refused to go with her until she started poking you with her trident, happily reminding you that she could run you through if you’d prefer.  
  
She pulls you down deep, so deep that you feel cold all over. “This pressure should kill me,” you tell her as she swims ahead of you, pulling you along by the wrist like some child. She turns to glance at you, raising one brow.  
  
“You’ll be fine,” she scoffs. “That kiss of life ain't gonna let your brain bleed right outta yo ears, starfish, same as it won’t let you drown.”  
  
“What about freezing to death?” you ask. “Will it take care of that, too?”  
  
“You’ll get used to it, same as us fisherfolk did,” she tells you with a shrug and another grin.  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
She’s different around her people—which _holy shit her people_ —you watch all the mischievous cheer drain out of her, her eyes going cold and her voice fucking glacial. Her touch changes too, grip going tight enough to hurt, that trident of hers steadied at your ribs like she hasn’t just gotten you here with nothing more than a hand wrapped around your wrist.  
  
Gone are the nicknames—starfish, anemone, tuna—all gone. Now you’re just the prisoner, or once, laughingly to a creep with purple gills and teeth even more fearsome than hers, _pet_.  
  
She doesn’t let you out of her sight though, which you’re grateful for. You would have thought she'd have passed you off to one of her vassals or whatever, maybe told them to take you to a cell or something. But no, she’s all queen now, making nice among the common folk even as she holds you close to her.  
  
“Gotta protect my treasure,” she whispers to you once, lips brushing your ear, after a fishdude brushes talons over your upper thigh.  
  
The city is difficult to take in, the weird streets all lit by the phosphorescent glow of what look like anemones mounted on posts. The architecture is both gorgeous and fearsome, the houses all curves and coral, dotted here and there with skulls and the bones of random creatures.  
  
You aren’t there for long—she doesn’t seem to trust you among the masses, like one of the fish people are gonna steal you right out from under her nose.  
  
After a few pleasantries and sharp warnings, she takes you to one of the largest dwellings—something like the palaces you’d read about in your mother’s books. She leads you down dim corridors lit by the same weird anemone lamps and eventually pushes you into a room that’s decorated in rich fuschias and pinks so dark they’re nearly red.  
  
Once the door is closed behind you, she lets you go with a sigh, shaking her head.  
  
“Nice group of folks you’ve got here,” you tell her, rolling your eyes and flopping onto something that you _hope_ is a bed. It rolls alarmingly beneath your weight, like it’s _alive_.  
  
Her eyes snap open and she bares her teeth at you. “Now starfish, don’t go thinkin’ you’re all special ‘cause I aint poked you all full of holes, you got me?”  
  
You level your best glare at her. “Sure, cause you’re really gonna kill me now,” you scoff, trying to sound brave even as your brain seems to remember that you’re locked in a room with a monster.  
  
She hisses at you, and with a flick of that weird fin of hers, she’s right in your face. “I’ll _krill_ you anytime I please. Just because I treat my treasures all nice don’t mean I can’t be right nasty—I’ll carve that little pink body o’ yours up if I get a hankerin’ for monkey blood, you hear?”  
  
You hide the way your hands are shaking behind your back—you don’t cower, but you bite your lip against a retort, leaning ever so slightly away from her teeth.  
  
She grins at you, and it isn’t a nice grin. It’s all teeth. “You know what my kind did to yours before they all went belly up cause they couldn’t handle a little water?”  
  
You remember the stories. Your throat works as you swallow and you watch her track the movement. “That’s right, little anemone, we ate you all up like the guppies you were. Don’t try me and I won’t use your bones to pick the flesh from my teeth, capiche?”  
  
Quietly, you nod and try not to piss yourself.  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
“So fishbait,” she purrs, nuzzling at the back of your neck later that night. She’s pressed up against your back, the weird kelp bed moving lazily beneath the two of you. The crooning noises that she makes are disturbing enough, but the way that she’s tucked herself around you makes you feel claustrophobic and smothered. As much as the two of you craved touch, you and Dirk never touched much. You’ve slept together in more ways than one, held hands, kissed, and cried in each others arms, but he’d always shy away at first. After so long, you’d started shying away from it too.  
  
The adrenaline of the day has worn away completely, leaving you shaking and scared with a shard of ice in your gut. It really hits you then, how much you should fear her. You’ve been wrong since the moment you saw her, her almost-humanity intriguing you and dampening your fear response. Now all that fear is starting to make itself known, your insides gone to knots and panic like a knot in your throat.  
  
One of her arms is wrapped around your waist, the sharp fin along her forearm pressed against the soft flesh of your stomach. You aren’t stupid enough to think it’s an accident.  
  
You don’t know what she’d been about to say, but whatever it was drifts off when she notices your trembling, her arm tightening around you. “Shoosh, little tuna,” she murmurs, running her fingers through your hair. “I ain't gonna krill you unless you make me, you hear? So just don’t be gettin’ any _ideas_ up in that monkey brain o’ yours and we won’t have no problems.”  
  
The feel of her hands in your hair has less of a calming effect than she probably thought it would—it just makes you think of Dirk up there on the surface, who by now has to have noticed that you’re gone. You wonder if he dived for you, braving the waters in the hopes of finding a corpse at the very least. By now, he’ll be thinking that he’s completely alone in the world. The thought makes tears well up in your eyes—tears that just mix with the rest of the water around you, unnoticed amongst the salt and wet.  
  
You shiver and go slack in her arms despite the incessant throb of panic, your head lolling back onto her shoulder. She makes a pleased sound in response, wrapping her tail around one of your legs, the tip tucked between your knees.  
  
“Sleep now, little treasure,” she purrs, and eventually, you do.  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
She keeps you on lockdown, the first few days. Well, you call them days in your head, but who knows how long it’ll have been, what with the utter lack of sunlight. Her room is dark, made for eyes that see better than yours; just the dim glow of her pink anemone lamp to keep you company.  
  
At first, you think that she locks you in there while she’s gone so that you can’t try to escape. You think that she’s trying to drive you mad, alone in that dark room for what feels like an eternity, time slowed to a crawl. But the third time you hear claws scrabbling against the doorframe, you realize that’s not it at all. She isn’t trying to keep you in—she’s trying to keep her people out.  
  
(“It’s in our nature to be curious, tuna,” she’d told you when you informed her of the sound.  
  
“But isn’t that like mutiny? They’re going against their queen.”  
  
She’d shrugged. “It ain't mutiny if they put you back just the way they found you, now is it?”)  
  
The sound of talons against the door becomes a soundtrack in the dim of the room—just the soft pulsing of the water all around you and the monsters scratching at the door to drown out the silence. There’s nothing to occupy your mind—no books, no alcohol, no brother. Your mind is the sharpest it’s been in years, since you first discovered your mother’s stash, and that sharpness is destroying you. Dirk would have appreciated the irony.  
  
It’s lonely enough that when Meenah gets back each night, you start greeting her at the door, eager to feel her arms around you just for some kind of contact, your discomfort at being touched eroded after a mere days. Even before, when you and Dirk were the last humans in the world, you still had _him_.  
  
You break appalling quickly, time and darkness and silence making your mind crack to pieces until she returns to glue them sloppily back together.  
  
She has you tied around her little finger within the first week and you still aren’t stupid enough to think the circumstances that lead up to it were an accident. You just don’t care.  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
In the end, what gets her to let you out is you killing yourself.  
  
You strangle yourself with her seaweed-woven sheets, the silence and the dark too much to bear, and when you gasp back to life, she kills you all over again—her teeth in your throat and your blood in the water.  
  
When you awaken for the second time, she’s glaring at you, the fins at her neck flared wide—her needle-sharp teeth red with your blood. “Now why’d you go and do that, starfish? I thought we had somethin’ _reel_ special, you an me.”  
  
You cough, and feel at your throat, surprised to find tender scar tissue and throbbing bruises instead of a gaping hole. Your voice is barely a whisper when it comes out. “I can’t do this, Meenah,” you croak. “It’s so dark—so damn quiet, don’t you get it? I’m going crazy in here and I can’t do it anymore.”  
  
At that, her eyes soften—not much, but enough. She pulls you close to her and blows a frustrated stream of bubbles against your hair when you start to sob. “Calm down, little catfish, ain't nobody got time for tears. We’ll need ta get you some shinier digs, but I aint gonna be leavin’ you here by your lonesome no more, got it?”  
  
Her gills flutter, tickling your lips. You lick them, chasing away the tingle, and are rewarded when she lets out a little burble as your tongue skirts along the edge of her gills by accident. You try not to smile and repeat the gesture. “You promise?” you say, voice trembling.  
  
A long moment passes while she squirms against you, before finally—  
  
“I promise,” she whispers, voice huskier than usual.  
  
You shiver and press yourself closer, wrapping your legs around her waist like a giant monkey. The tines of her earfin pokes against your cheek when you bury your nose into her hair, but you don’t even care. You soak in the contact as she pushes the two of you to the bed with a sweep of her tail, settling the both of you onto it with a gentleness that she doesn’t usually possess.  
  
“Thank you,” you breathe back, lips dragging against her ear.  
  
A shudder is your only response.  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
The day that she takes you to court, her hair is all piled high atop her head, decorated with shells and trinkets and god knows what else. It’s pretty, and you tell her so as she tosses a random assortment of junk onto the bed next to you.  
  
She gives you an unimpressed look. “You tryin’ to butter me up, sweetfin?” she asks, dry as can be.  
  
You shrug. “It just looks pretty, is all,” you tell her.  
  
Her look eases into a small smile, just a hint of jagged teeth showing past her plush lips. “Yeah, well, we 'bout to make you just as shiny starfish, so take off them rags o’ yours.”  
  
You jump when her fingers go to the hem of your shirt, unthinkingly batting them away.  
  
“Sorry,” you gasp, flinching when she glares at you. “I—”  
  
The clothes you have on are the same ones that you did when she first took you—the white shirt with the cat decal and the pink skirt and scarf. You’ve never been naked in front of Meenah, always choosing to change and wash yourself when she’s out and about, and you aren’t too sure if you want to start now.  
  
“—I wasn’t expecting it, sorry. Go ahead,” you finish, raising your arms above your head.  
  
You still flinch when she drags the shirt up over your head, but you don’t think she notices, barely stopping to fight with the clasps of your bra before moving on to shrug you out of your skirt and underwear. When she’s done, you’re left with just the scarf wrapped around your neck, your arms crossed over your breasts in an attempt at modesty.  
  
The first thing she does is bat your arms away from your chest, leaning forward to tweak a nipple when you give her an affronted look.  
  
“You aint got anyfin’ different than what I got, girly,” she says, leaning in to apparently inspect them, tracing her claws around your nipples. Your boobs are a little bit bigger than hers, but the nipples and areolas are way smaller, a fact that seems to intrigue her. “At least not in the chestbag department,” she amends when she moves to peer curiously between your legs.  
  
You squeak when she uses a hand to part them—your face flushing red when she moves between your thighs to see it up close. The sight of her between your thighs makes some part of you go white-hot all over, your belly swimmingly molten with sudden, out of place arousal. It makes you flinch when she wriggles closer—so close that you can feel her breath against you.  
  
Still completely intent, she prods at you with her fingers, spreading the lips of your pussy and holding you open in a way that makes you go pink all over. You’ve never felt this vulnerable—this bared to another person in your life, not even when you and Dirk were fooling around, playing at lovers. You want to smack her away from you, but manage to stay the impulse until she slips a finger inside and—  
  
You yelp, finally giving in and smacking her away from your crotch. “You can’t just do that,” you say shrilly, clenching your thighs together.  
  
“Why da fuck not?” she asks, cocking her head at you.  
  
You can almost feel the flush deepening. “Because you just can’t! Are you telling me that your people go around fondling each other all willy nilly? Sticking fingers where they don’t belong?”  
  
She blinks. “Shore, if it’s matin’ season. There aint no other reason to, but seein’ as you’re mine and I can do what I want wit you, I figured I’d poke around a bit. See whatchu’ got.”  
  
You perk up a little, the flush easing slightly as your interest is piqued. “Wait, so you guys don’t have sex unless it’s mating season?” you ask.  
  
She lets out a little peal of laughter that upsets the water around the two of you. “Are you glubbin’ kiddin’ me? If we did the nasty all the glubbin’ time there’d be none a us left! The ocean wouldn’t be blue no more, it’d be red as the underside of a blanket octopus’ skirt.”  
  
She laughs again, like the idea is outrageous.  
  
“You tellin’ me you landglubbers do the nasty any time you got a hankerin' for it?” Her eyes are wide and when you nod, she giggles again. “No wonder you silly monkeys died out.”  
  
“But naw, we fisherfolk only do the deed when the water starts warmin’ up, that way the pups don’t freeze straight outta the belly.”  
  
“So, you’re sayin’ that you only ever have sex once a year? You don’t do it for pleasure or anything?”  
  
She shrugs. “Maybe some do, but us upper class folk try ta avoid it if we can. More clutches a pups mean more risk of ‘em overthrowin’ us. Speakin’ from a personal point a view, I think it’s a bit borin’. I ain't never been bred myself, but I whelped a litter with one a my soldiers a few summers ago. The pups are still young, but they ain't ever met me so I ain't worried about it.”  
  
You gape at her, jaw slack as she slides up next to you again, starting to rummage through the pile of stuff on the bed. “Are you telling me that you got somebody else pregnant?” you say faintly.  
  
She gives you a weird look. “‘Course. I’m da queen, got my own set a claspers for breedin’ the ladyfolk. Don’t know no queen dat’s ever wanted more pups, but if I did want ‘em...”  
  
“You’d have an entire kingdom of baby mama’s,” you whisper, unsure if you’re more horrified or curious. On the one hand, it’s interesting stuff, but on the other... it’s really weird.  
  
She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, _shore_ , if you wanna put it like that. Now, stop talkin’ about makin’ babies and try this on.”  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
In the end, you have to compromise. As it turned out, the only things she’d brought with her were jewelry and bits and bobbles to weave into your hair—planning to leave you bare everywhere else.  
  
“It’s tradition,” she’d insisted, pouting as you crossed your arms over your breasts.  
  
You didn’t give two measly craps if it was tradition or not, you weren’t about to go swimming around an unfamiliar underwater city with your junk all out there, and you’d told her as much.  
  
Eventually she’d conceded to letting you keep the skirt, provided you went bare-chested like her. When you agreed, she grinned.  
  
“Gonna bling you out, starfish,” she said, draping gold necklaces and pearls around your neck and slipping bangles around your wrists and ankles. The rings that she slipped onto your fingers were big, gaudy things—some with large gemstones set into them, others just burnished gold woven into patterns.  
  
For one horrifying moment, she’d given your chest a contemplative look—and you’d taken one look at her face and the gold rings in her nipples before putting your foot down.  
  
“No.”  
  
“But they’d look so shiny with some gold in ‘em, c’mon tunafish, pretty please. Just one?”  
  
You glared at her and slapped both hands over your boobs. “I said no.”  
  
By the time she’s done braiding random shit into your short hair, your stomach is an anxious knot again. You’re glad that you’re getting away from her room, but when you remember the sound of claws against the doorframe, you feel sick all over again.  
  
“I’ll protect ya, catfish, so quit your worryin’,” she tells you when you poke your head out of the doorway, hesitating behind her.  
  
Annoyed, you blow a bubble at her face. “Why do you do that? Call me all those nicknames? You know my name, but you haven’t used it once.”  
  
She shrugs at you, taking hold of one of your arms and pulling you out into the hallway. “You’re mine, so I figure I can call you what I want. _I_ didn’t name you, so why should I use a name some landglubber that don’t mean nothin’ to me gave you?”  
  
You start to protest, but she’s quick to dig her claws into the meat of your upper arm, cutting you off. “I aint gonna hear no more 'bout it, kay? Now I’m gonna go play nice with my people and you gonna be right there next to me lookin’ pretty. So don’t get your flippers in a twist when I get quiet on you.”  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
Playing nice with her people consists of sitting on a throne made of skulls, an unfamiliar crown perched on her head while people whine at her. You aren’t too sure if they’re commoners or some of her ‘upper class’ you keep hearing about, but she doesn’t seem to care much either way.  
  
“The dragons are nestin’ too close to our homes, the water’s boiling us al—”  
  
“So move.”  
  
“The seahorses made off with our children—”  
  
“Keep a better eye on your spawn, then.”  
  
“The kelp forests are getting too thinned out, they’ll be gone before it’s time to harvest—”  
  
“Kill yourselves some fishes then.”  
  
It’s depressing to listen to, keeping yourself still on the floor beside her throne, and there isn’t much to do but it’s worth it to not be locked away. Her voice is different when she’s like this. When she’s here in this throne room her voice is deep and regal, cold as ice. Gone are the terrible fishpuns and the slurred speech patterns. Until now you’d thought that was just her accent or maybe just the way she was, but now you aren’t too sure which one is real.  
  
You entertain yourself that way, just listening to her talk and trying to see if you can pick apart this new voice of hers and scoop out pieces of the old one. You listen to her, just her, and every once in awhile her hand will stray to your hair, scratching at your scalp like you’re a favored cat. You don’t really pay any attention at all to her people until one male with huge shoulders and purple-pink gills steps forward.  
  
You aren’t sure what it is that draws your attention to him—whether it’s his size or his coloring, which is the closest to Meenah’s that you’ve seen yet, or if it’s the way she stiffens up a fraction, her hand going still in your hair, claws pricking at your scalp.  
  
“Breeding season is soon, your highness,” he starts out, bowing low and only moving out of the position when she gestures him up with a wave of her trident.  
  
“Yes, and?”  
  
The big male flushes. “And your court was wondering if you would be, ah, taking up with anyone this season?”  
  
Beside you Meenah goes rigid as a board, her fingers clenching tight around her trident. “And how exactly does that concern you?” she bites out, baring her teeth.  
  
He flinches, hunching over like he’s tempted to bow again before thinking better of it. “I-I have a son, my queen, that I believe may be a good m-match. He would give you strong pups and—”  
  
“And you thought you would presume to approach me with an offer. Tell me, where is this son of yours?”  
  
Your heart goes cold even as the male’s face brightens. “He’s right outside, my queen. I could bring him to you if you’d like,” he breathes excitedly, his spiky tail twining in on itself with excitement.  
  
“Do that,” Meenah says coldly, and pushes herself off the throne.  
  
The man returns with his son in tow, grinning even as his son’s face pales. The son is almost larger than his father, his gills a dark red and the markings on his fins reminiscent of a lion fish. He at least seems smarter than his father, because he stops just inside the door, body going stiff and still.  
  
“Bring them to me,” Meenah orders, and you watch in horror as both of the males are pushed forward, the father only seeming to realize the mistake when he’s bowed prostrate before her, one of the guard’s spears poised against the back of his neck.  
  
“Please, your highness, I meant no disrespect—”  
  
Meenah makes a rude noise in the back of her throat. “I think you’ll find that you did, ser. You came into my throne room, offering me your spawn so he might pump me full of pups, isn’t that so?”  
  
“Pleas—”  
  
“You would think that your kind would have died off by now, you who think I’m no more than a broodmother. I know I’ve killed enough of you.”  
  
She turns to the son, eyes like chips of flint. “Tell me, did you have any part in this or did your sire merely drag you here in the hopes of getting an heiress to the kingdom out of it?”  
  
The boy shakes his head, fins flared up in fear. “I had no part in this, my queen. I- my sire made me come.”  
  
She smiles wickedly, leveling her trident against the older male’s throat. “Good pup,” she purrs. “You may go, provided that you let everyone between here and your hive know what becomes of those who cross me.”  
  
With one last smile, she plunges the trident home.  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
You don’t ask her why she did it. In fact, you say absolutely nothing, choosing to sit quietly at her side for the rest of the day, eyes glued to where the almost-purple blood has since dissolved into the water. The corpse is gone, as is the son, who fled the scene the moment his father got three new holes in his neck.  
  
Quietly, you trail after her back to her room at the end of the day, and meekly, you let her tumble you down onto the bed. You let her cuddle up close and don’t respond to her nicknames, her questions, or any of the inane prattling that she spouts before she falls asleep.  
  
The shock wears off after she’s already asleep, leaving you to handle the panic attack by yourself.  
  
It’s not that you don’t think the guy deserved it, whoever he was. It isn’t even the fact that it’s the first time you’ve ever seen a dead body. Hell, you've _been_ a dead body before.  
  
What gets you is how ruthless she’d been—how she’d twisted the trident, wrenching his head from his shoulders like it was that easy. It makes your head hurt, knowing that the mischievous, ridiculous fishgirl that you’ve been sharing a bed with is the same one you saw today—the same one who tore your throat out and brought you back again because she was annoyed.  
  
You roll over and into the circle of her arms, careful to avoid her fins, and trace the lines of her face with your eyes. She’s pretty when she’s sleeping, her gills fluttering against your sides and her hair floating loosely around the two of you like a cloud. She looks girl-like, almost, despite the fins and the lack of legs. Not quite a woman grown, but far from a child.  
  
You wonder if she’d do to you what she did to that man today should you defy her. Immediately, you feel silly for thinking it. Of course she would. You keep forgetting, because she does things like play with your hair and joke around with you. She would never call you a friend, you know that. You’re hers—her possession, her plaything, her pet. She might kill you if she decides it amuses her, and she’s just as likely to bring you back just to do it again.  
  
She isn’t your friend.  
  
She isn’t your protector.  
  
She isn’t your brother, your sister, your mother.  
  
She’s your jailer at best, your owner at worst.  
  
You can’t let yourself forget.  
  
You can smile and act the part of her happy pet to keep her happy, but you can never allow yourself to believe that she actually cares.  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
“It’s important dat I do this,” she tells you.  
  
You eye the dark water dubiously where the cliff drops off into endless black, then the bloody mess of a thing that she’s got in a net behind her.  
  
“You have to... feed something.”  
  
She beams at you. “Yep.”  
  
“...And you want me to go with you.”  
  
“I told you that I ain’t gonna be leavin’ you by your lonesome no more and I sure ain’t plannin’ on leavin’ you in the city, so you’re gonna come with me.”  
  
You regard her warily and bite down a retort. Instead you say, “And you think I’ll survive the pressure.”  
  
She shrugs. “If you don’t, it ain’t like I can’t bring ya right back.”  
  
And that, apparently, is that.  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
You don’t die from the pressure, even though you really should. You don’t quite understand it, the same way that you don’t understand how you’re still alive while breathing salt water and not eating or drinking a damn thing. Even ignoring the breathing water thing, you should have at least starved by now. It’s not like she granted you a pair of gills when she brought you back to life—you’ve read enough medical books in your library to know that humans aren’t equipped for breathing underwater without a supply of actual air. You ignore it for the most part, labeling it with a big sparkly proclamation of _magic_ in your head.  
  
You’ll go crazy if you think about it too hard, because hell, you’d effectively killed yourself from strangulation, which means you’re definitely breathing something. Whatever, you don’t care anymore.  
  
She’s brought an anemone lamp with the two of you, which is a good thing because even with it you can barely see a thing. She’s got one hand wrapped around your wrist, doing most of the work for you as she drags both you and whatever dead thing she’s got in that net with ease.  
  
“So uh, exactly what are we feeding?” you ask, when the staticky white noise of true silence sets in. It makes you uneasy, the same way that her dark, silent room had made you want to claw at your ear drums.  
  
“Mom,” she replies, shrugging.  
  
You frown at the back of her head and resist the urge to bat her long hair away from your face. It’s in a hundred tiny braids today, woven with what you think are bones. “Your... mother lives down here,” you say. And then, “But I thought you—”  
  
“She aint my _reel_ mom,” Meenah interrupts, scoffing. “I krilled her good, stabbed her right through the gills, sure as kelp. How’d you think I got my crown?”  
  
She hisses at one of the horrible little fish that gets too close to you, sending it skittering back out into the dark. The two of you swim in silence as you mull this over. Weird. “So if the thing down here isn’t your mom, why do you call her that?”  
  
Meenah snorts. “She’s as good as. I told you, we highborn folk don’t like our young nowhere near us, so my real mom dropped a clutch of eggs off down here, hoping we’d get gobbled up. Big surprise to her when I showed up.”  
  
“But,” you start. “I thought sharks gave live births?”  
  
She gives you a look over her shoulder like she thinks you’re stupid for even asking. “Yeah, well, we ain’t sharks, are we? I ain’t gonna schoolfeed ya in fisherfolk reproduction, starfish. This ain’t class.”  
  
You open your mouth to protest and cut yourself off with a little shriek when she waves her trident at you.  
  
She sighs, rolling her eyes. “But I guess it ain’t gonna hurt ya none to know a little. We ain’t sharks or lionfish or rays, same as how you humans weren’t reel monkeys. We might share some traits with ‘em, but that ain’t mean we got everyfin in common.”  
  
She gestures down at her tail behind her. “You say I look all sharkey, yeah? Well, that ain’t all true. I got myself some sharkey fins, but ma teeth are more like a viper or angler fish.” She bares them at you, demonstrating, and then gestures to the spines running down her back—the sharp ones that you have to be careful not to let gut you in the middle of the night. “Ma spines got more in common with a lionfish than anyfin else, ‘specially with the venom.”  
  
She catches a shrimp in her mouth when it swims by, crunching down and chewing before continuing. She gestures at the place where dark skin fades to rough sharkflesh and you have to blink for a minute before you see what she’s pointing at. “I got my set a claspers down here, but I still got my lady parts too. Only us queens have dat, and I don't know of no shark that’s got both. They might get their flip flop on some, but they ain’t got both. Us fisherfolk ain’t all the same, neither. Some of us might lay a clutch of eggs out in the open, but most of us keep ‘em inside, got it? Mom dropped me and ma hatchmates off out here ‘cause she wanted us to get eated up, simple as dat.”  
  
You’re quiet for a minute after she stops talking, your head reeling.  
  
“Weird,” you say after another minute.  
  
Totally weird.  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
Her mom is actually one of the giant krakens you’d once seen from your roof. Her size is ridiculous, her beak twenty times the size of you and even the smallest of tentacles could crush your old fortress with just the first bit of it.  
  
The first glimpse you get makes you drop the anemone lamp, forcing Meenah to swoop and catch it before it’s lost forever. She gives you an unfriendly glare, pushing it back into your arms, but you can’t be bothered, too busy wondering how deep this water is if it’s deep enough to house something of that size comfortably.  
  
It’s all you can see, swelling up so big before you that you can’t make out anything around it. Just it’s tentacles, huge and white and horrifying.  
  
The meal she’s brought it looks comically small in comparison, and you wonder how often she has to feed it. Can it feed itself down here? Is there even any prey big enough to feed it? You shudder when she lets go of your wrist and swims up to it, rubbing her face against one of the smaller tentacles before swimming back around to push the meal into its beak.  
  
You can faintly make out a quiet humming noise coming from her and you wonder if she’s speaking to it. Faintly, you think that you really hope it doesn’t speak back.  
  
She turns to grin at you, needle-sharp teeth looking no more threatening than a fuzzy puppy next to that, and beckons to you.  
  
You hug the lamp to your chest and shake your head as vigorously as the water will allow you. You don’t even care if she kills you, you aren’t going near that thing.  
  
She rolls her eyes, swimming back to you so she can wrap a hand around your waist and dragging you back. Up close, you can see the barnacles clinging to its skin—the faint green of plantlife dotting the whiteness here and there.  
  
“I’m ready to go home now,” you hiss, flinching when a tentacle wraps around both of you, pulling you in closer. It’s bigger than both of you, that fraction of tentacle, like having a giant wall warp and close in on you. You wonder if it’s possible to expire out of fear.  
  
She pinches you. “Don’t be a baby,” she says. Then, “Mom, meet Roxy. Roxy, Mom.”  
  
You don’t know what’s more surprising, the fact that she’d called you by your name or the fact that the thing responds—a noise like whale song that vibrates the water around you, louder than anything you’ve ever heard. You clap your hands over your ears, wincing when Meenah laughs. “Mom says hi,” she tells you, winking before cuddling up against a tentacle like she plans on sleeping there.  
  
“So, what? I’m meeting your mom now, you planning on making an honest woman of me?” you ask nervously, your voice hitching a little bit at the end.  
  
Meenah gives you a weird look.  
  
“...Nevermind,” you say, only resisting a little when she draws you in against her, arms around your waist, your back flush against her front. The metal of her nipple rings is a shocking chill against your bare shoulders, and you shiver once before going pliant.  
  
“So are we supposed to be going to sleep or something?” you ask after a moment. She pokes you in the side with one of her fins, sharply enough that it draws a pinprick of blood.  
  
“Shoooosh, just take a nap with us, starfish,” she sighs, already sounding sleepy.  
  
“...Okay, sure why not. That’s a great idea.”  
  
She jabs you one more time, sluggishly, and then she’s out like a light.  
  
She sleeps.  
  
You spend the entire time terrified out of your mind.  
  
No one is particularly surprised, least of all you.  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
By the time mating season rolls around, you’re used to the city. You’re used to the big merfolk leering at you and the smaller ones getting out of your way—you’re used to Meenah’s odd whims, and somehow, you’ve almost gotten used to her mom. Well, you’re used to her enough that you can take a very fitful nap in Meenah’s arms while the two of you are perched on a tentacle, but it’s still progress.  
  
It’s been months since you were dragged into the city, months that you’ve had to share Meenah’s bed and listen to her whine and put up with her messing around with your hair. You’re used to her tempers too, though they’ve only been aimed in your direction once or twice.  
  
(Though that once or twice has made you wonder exactly how many times she can bring you back from the dead.)  
  
You’re used to things enough that you can almost wander away from her by about ten feet and she’ll just call you back if you get too far for her to deem safe.  
  
In the end, she’s not the one who tells you that mating season has rolled around. Nope, you figure that one out for yourself when you wander down the hallway one day while she’s still sleeping and almost trip over two writhing figures.  
  
You’re quick to backpedal, flinching when two figures bare their teeth at you.  
  
You backpedal all the way back to your room, where Meenah is still sleeping fitfully on the bed. She’s thrashing a little, her tail twining in on itself as she gnashes her teeth together. You decide against poking her, and instead you just watch her, slumped against one wall in the darkness.  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
When she wakes, she does so with a snarl, lashing out with claws and fins. It makes you glad that you’d decided against getting close.  
  
It takes her entirely too long to recover, slashing at the sheets and knocking over the lamp. Churning bubbles surround her in a cloud. You aren’t quite scared—after all, even if she kills you, she’ll still bring you back.  
  
It disturbs you a bit though, makes you want to flee away from the snarling teeth in case she spots you.  
  
Thankfully, she doesn’t seem to notice you until she’s feeling less homicidal, because when she does spot you she just cocks her head, blinks, and asks, “Why you all the way over there?”  
  
Wordless, you gesture at the bedsheets.  
  
“Ah,” she breathes. “What a mess.”  
  
A moment passes while she tries to fluff the seaweed back into something that isn’t quite so shredded.  
  
“So,” you say. “Mating season, huh? It gonna be like this the whole time? ‘Cause I gotta tell you, I don’t fancy getting shredded every morning for... how long does it last again?”  
  
If you didn’t know her, you’d almost think she looked embarrassed. “It’ll last til’ I all up and get it outta my system,” she says at last, nibbling at one of her claws. “We fisherfolk try not to end up tearin’ throats out left and right durin’ this time a year, but there ain’t no guarantee or nothin’. This time a year is ‘bout as aggressive as we ever get, so you gonna have ta be extra careful so you don’t get some pointy jams to the chesticles.”  
  
You fight back the urge to sigh. “That’s the only symptom? Because I’m gonna say it lowers your inhibitions a little bit too, considering I just almost tripped over someone getting their mack on in the hallway.”  
  
She blanches, and abruptly is in your face, pawing at your body. “You can’t be gettin’ your meander on all nonchalant like that, you dig? Not right now.” she hisses, teeth bared in your direction.  
  
You shrug. “It’s not like I knew about it or anything. You didn’t tell me.”  
  
She slumps back onto the bed, blowing an annoyed stream of bubbles in your direction. “Yeah, well, I’m tellin’ ya right now. Your human tush ain’t allowed to leave this room without me til’ this is over, even the prettiest treasures get fucked up if they get dented too much.”  
  
You finally give in to the urge to sigh, shucking your clothes and crawling onto the bed with her. The room is cold as hell, and after not sleeping for the majority of the night, you’re completely exhausted. Lucky you, when she’s not threatening to tear you in half her boob’s make great pillows. You nestle there, letting the sound of her heartbeat lull you into a doze.  
  
She’s fidgeting though; her tail keeps lashing against your ankles as she shifts her weight back and forth. She’s not even petting your hair like she usually does—just squirming beneath you, her whole skeleton tense.  
  
“Okay, what is it?” you ask, after the fifth time she dislodges you.  
  
The laugh she lets out is almost nervous and she squirms again, the sharp edge of one of her tail fins cutting into the meat of your thigh. The salt water stings, like normal, and that sting is enough to finally annoy you into opening your eyes.  
  
She’s blushing, the tips of her ear fins a shade pinker than usual as she bites down on her lower lip. It makes you look at her funny, which in turn makes her fidget more.  
  
“What?” she says defensively. “I ain’t allowed to fidget no more?”  
  
You blink at her and then down at the boob you’ve been using as a pillow.  
  
Sudden comprehension.  
  
“Oh my god, you’re horny,” you hiss at her, laughing when she bares her teeth at you. “That’s it, isn’t it? You wanna stick your weird shark dick in some fish lady’s vajayjay, and my face on your boob is getting you all hot and bothered.”  
  
You laugh again, delighted when she snarls weakly at you. “So what’s stopping you?” you ask, jabbing her in the gills with your elbow just to hear the weird gurgly sound she makes. “Go get yourself some tail.”  
  
She glowers at you, her fists clenched at her sides. She doesn’t look like a queen right now, she looks like a flustered teenager—she looks like Dirk the first time he caught you masturbating, awkward as hell and contemplating retreat via the window. Your amusement makes it easy to ignore the fact that she’s still got sharp teeth and is perfectly willing to kill you.  
  
She mutters something that you can’t make out, so you lean closer. “What was that?”  
  
“I _said_ , I made you a promise. I ain’t gonna leave you by your lonesome no more, but you shore can’t go with me. You ain’t got no pheromones of your own, but dat ain’t no guarantee that some fishboy won’t try nothin’ while I’m lookin’ the other way.”  
  
You blink at her as she shifts all over the bed, looking about as uncomfortable as you’ve ever seen her. “You’re telling me that the only reason you aren’t getting your mack on right now is ‘cause you promised you wouldn’t leave me alone?” That’s actually weirdly sweet, even if it makes no sense.  
  
She gives a jerky little nod, teeth clacking shut.  
  
She’s still squirming and as the silence between you stretches, you become aware of the effect that her obvious arousal is starting to have on you—the heat that’s starting to pool in your belly, your heart beating just a little too fast. You swallow, shivering when she lets out this tiny little sound—like a love child between a whimper and a growl.  
  
You have to lick your lips twice before you can speak. “I thought you said that you don’t like to mate?”  
  
She grits her teeth. “I don’t. Risk a pups ain’t worth a tingly niceness that’s only gonna last for a coupla’ minutes.”  
  
It makes sense, you guess. You and Dirk were never exactly trying for kids, but you weren’t really being careful either—it’s a miracle you never got knocked up. You slump over so that you’re lying on your stomach, your torso overlapping hers so you can settle your chin onto her ribs. She shivers when you touch her.  
  
“So what? You spend weeks horny as hell? That sucks.”  
  
She shrugs. “It ain’t usually this bad. Shut myself in here for a few weeks with some grub and the heat ain’t too bad, just gotta ride it out.”  
  
Your mouth feels dry. “So... you’re saying it’s bad because I’m here.”  
  
She shrugs again, which is as good as her coming out and just saying yes. “But you said that I didn’t have the same pheromones?”  
  
“Don’t mean you ain’t got no hole to fill. Just means your smell ain’t drivin’ me up the walls.”  
  
“So, if I was a fishlady...”  
  
She snorts. “If you were my kind, you’d of been filled already.”  
  
Silence again.  
  
With you weighing her torso down, she isn’t thrashing quite as much now. The end of her tail is twisting a bit, the fins at the end almost trembling, and she’s taken up gnashing her teeth instead, but she isn’t squirming as much. You poke at her bellybutton, trying not to drift off completely.  
  
“So,” you start, nearly squirming yourself. “If you wanna go out, I’m not gonna consider your promise broken or anything.”  
  
She looks at you for a moment, then shakes her head. “Naw, pups ain’t worth it, I told you. I’ll deal, don’t you get your worry on, tunafish.”  
  
You sure hope so.  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
For a while, she does manage it. Meenah is remarkably good at knowing which nights will be worse than others, and takes to sleeping on the floor for those so she doesn’t accidentally shred you.  
  
She doesn’t even seem as bad as that first night, smiling and talking like usual, and occasionally slipping out of the room for a bit so she can catch you both some food. After all, you might not have to eat, being some weird pseudo zombie thing, but she does. Magic still makes no sense.  
  
Then comes the day that she doesn’t come back from catching lunch.  
  
At first, you wait her out. You still don’t have a very good grasp of time down here, but you know enough to know that when you start getting tired, it means quite a few hours have passed. You wait a little longer, and end up falling asleep while you do so.  
  
She still isn’t back when you wake up.  
  
She’s the queen, you think. She can fend for herself.

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
She comes back two days later, while you’re still sleeping.  
  
You wake up slowly to warm arms wrapped around you, her tail tucked between your calves. She’s sleeping, her head pillowed against your belly—gills tickling the skin there as they flutter. She doesn’t look too bad, all things considered. There are a couple scratch marks on her back that weren’t there before, and carefully, you flatten your palm against an area that looks like claws were dug into the skin.  
  
You blush, your insides blooming with liquid heat as you realize what the mark means—your imagination conjuring up images of her twined around some small female, rutting against her as the female digs her claws in just to hang on.  
  
You squirm, trying not to wake her.  
  
You have no idea how fish have sex. It’s not like it was ever part of your curriculum or anything. Your mom collected some weird shit, but if she’d ever had a book on the mating habits of fish, you’d never seen it. Not that it mattered, because Meenah already told you that they weren’t the same as sharks or fish.  
  
She’s curled in on herself a bit, but you can still kind of see her weird fish dick things if you squint. Until she’d pointed them out to you, you’d just thought they were fins—weird, phallic shaped fins, but definitely fins. It’s... really weird, because they’re just there, two of them, just below her weird fish vajayjay.  
  
It’s so very alien, you think, running your hand down her side.  
  
Her hair is loose, which means that everything except what’s pinned beneath her is spread around her head like a cloud. You try to stroke it back, and get maybe half of it safely tucked beneath you before you give up.  
  
Your thoughts keep going back to her junk, though.  
  
She’s attractive, you already know that—a kind of lethal beauty in the way she moves and breathes. It’s not the first time you’ve gotten hot and bothered over her, but it is the first time that you’ve actually thought about whether the two of you are even compatible. You squint at her claspers again, thinking about whether or not they would fit inside of you. Definitely not both at one time, but you don’t think that’s how they use them anyway.  
  
Without thinking, you slide your hand down, over the curve of her belly and down her tail until you’re kind of... poking at them.  
  
They feel enough like a dick that you aren’t immediately grossed out by it, which is good, you guess. Feels like a dick, looks like a dick, well, it’s probably a dick.  
  
You wrap your hand around one of them, experimentally giving a pump. Meenah shifts in her sleep, groaning under her breath.  
  
It’s weird, really weird, but not necessarily in a bad way. It’s just new, the same way that Dirk was new to you before—back when the texture of his skin was something to marvel at. You stroke her again, head cocked.  
  
You’re just about to investigate her ladyparts when she stirs against you, squinting one eye open. “What you doing, angelfish?” she asks, voice still raspy with sleep.  
  
You shrug, fighting back the impulse to instinctively let go and pretend you weren’t fondling her. “Playing,” you say, ghosting a finger over the flesh there. She shudders, tail twisting in on itself as she desperately grabs a hold of your hip.  
  
“Not that it don’t feel nice, but uh, seriously tuna, you’re gonna wanna stop.”  
  
You think about it, because that’s an out right there. You don’t have to do this, hell, she might not even need you to do this. She’s been gone for days, it might be out of her system by now. But you aren’t really doing this for her sake, you realize. That might be a part of it, but you’re curious—the same curiosity that convinced you to crawl into Dirk’s bed the morning you two turned sixteen.  
  
You lean into her, mouthing along the edge of her ear fin. “What if I don’t wanna stop?”  
  
She gives a full body shudder, her gills fluttering alarmingly fast against your skin. “You don’t gotta do this or nofin,” she tries one more time. “I got my mack on earlier, so there ain’t no way that I’ll need it for another day.”  
  
You touch her hole, circling it with your fingers before dipping just the edge of your pinky in. You meet her eyes, ignoring the way that they widen—how she gasps, fingers tightening in the sheets. “I want you,” you tell her, and know that it’s the truth the second it leaves your mouth.  
  
She groans again, bucking up so your finger sinks into her a little bit more. “I ain’t gonna be soft on ya, tuna,” she warns you one last time, whimpering when you get another finger into her. “Once the heat takes me, I ain’t gonna be able to stop myself from bitin’ and clawin’ at you.”  
  
You shrug, crooking your fingers inside of her. “Think I’m used to the pain by now,” you tell her.  
  
With a whimper, she finally gives in to you—winding herself up your body until she can get to your lips. True to her word, she isn’t gentle. The kiss is nothing like the few you’d exchanged with Dirk. He’d always been too gentle with you, like he was afraid you’d break—kissing you so chastely that it would be up to you if you wanted a little tongue action. There’d been no passion with the two of you, not like there is with Meenah. She kisses you like she’s dying, licking into your mouth and taking your lower lip between her teeth and biting—  
  
You’re bleeding within seconds, which you’d expected, and at any rate, the blood is worth the sound that she makes when she licks it off—how she twists and pushes up against you, getting a hand on your boob and twisting your nipple between her fingers. You groan, wrapping your legs around her hips and rubbing yourself against her pelvis—anything to get some friction.  
  
She doesn’t have a bad idea there, with the boobs, and you think that you want to feel the cold metal of her ring against the warmth of her flesh, so you do. You cup her boob, ghosting fingers over the ring there and feeling the way her nipple tightens at your touch. Groaning, you pull away from her mouth, biting your way down her jaw and sucking little bruises into the side of her neck.  
  
She snarls, her grip on you turning just shy of painful. “I want—” you breathe into her skin, breaking off to gasp when she bites down on a patch of skin just short of where she’s still worrying at you nipples, tugging and pulling at them. “I want you inside me,” you finish, grinding desperately against her. You still don’t even know how that’ll work—it’s not like she’s got one dick between her legs like human males do. She’s got two and they’re further down her body, not even facing the right way—they’re backwards, pointing towards the end of her tail and you just don’t get it, but you’re totally willing to try.  
  
You imagine her—sitting on the edge of the bed, her tail tumbled over the side and you riding both of her weird damn fishdicks, pressed together inside you and stretching you out so far—and nearly go cross eyed with want.  
  
She wriggles out of the hold your legs have around her hips, biting down your chest—nipping at your tits, lathing your nipples roughly with her tongue, before moving on down your belly. She gives you a sly look from between your legs, brow arched as you squirm under her.  
  
“Patience, tuna,” she tells you, leaning in to touch the tip of her tongue to your clit.  
  
You nearly buck off the bed, hips twitching upwards so hard that she has to slap a hand over them just to ground you. She licks between your legs, lapping curiously at your clit for a few second before getting her tongue inside you. You squirm, moaning and getting two handfuls of her hair as she explores you, yanking on it to pull her closer.  
  
It feels fucking fantastic, you think, as she moves back to your clit—lapping at the bundle of nerves like it’s candy or something. Dirk had never done this—never had he put his mouth on any part of you lower than your collarbone, and briefly you mourn the fact that none of your reproductive textbooks had ever told you that you could find pleasure like this.  
  
She spends so long licking you that by the time she pulls away, you’re spilling over the edge, your orgasm taking you by surprise. It’s a small one, but after months, it feels fantastic. She growls, kissing you hungrily and pressing you back down into the bed, nipping at the smile on your lips.  
  
“The matin’ lust is ‘bout to take me, starfish,” she whispers, voice strained.  
  
You blink at her, confused. “I thought it already had,” you groan breathlessly, hips twisting up against her.  
  
She laughs against your lips. “You think I’d of had the peace a mind to get you all slick for me if I had been?”  
  
You stare at her, teeth digging into your lip when she gets a finger inside of you. Already you’re feeling the pleasure start to swell again.  
  
She’s practically purring, staring at you so intently, her pupils blown huge with want. It’s making you feel hot all over, and fuck, you just want her in you before you explode—  
  
“Ugh, just get in me already,” you growl, making a grab for one of her claspers and missing.  
  
“Think I can do that, treasure. Gonna pump you all full of me, have you beggin’ me for pups.”  
  
You didn’t think you’d be able to tell when she fully went into heat—hell, you’d thought she had been in heat—but you can tell the instant she does, because she snarls once and gets a mouthful of your neck.  
  
It hurts—it hurts a lot, actually. Up until now, she’d been playing, you realize. All those nips and bites were just her getting you in the mood, they hadn’t been what she’d been warning you about— _this was_ —the crazed way that she claws down your sides, teeth digging into your neck.  
  
She’s avoided your carotid and jugular, which is a good thing because you can tell that you’re bleeding.  
  
You have a minute to process the fact that you should really just stay limp before she curves her body strangely, most of her off the bed entirely, hovering just above your body. She bats your thighs apart with one hand, hissing low in her throat as she tries to get her not-dick thing angled right and—  
  
You whimper when she slides into you, digging your nails into her shoulder blades when she thrusts forward. She’s bigger than you thought—way bigger than Dirk, and longer too, enough that it’s painful when the head starts expanding, anchoring her inside you.  
  
You weren’t expecting the head to expand, and you’re fully caught off guard when she starts coming almost immediately, rutting into you as she fills you up. It feels weird as hell, but she seems to like it judging by the noises she’s making into your neck. And it feels... good, in a weird kind of way, the way she’s moving into you—filling you up so fast that you already feel full, some of it spilling out around her.  
  
Every time you think she’s done she just keeps going, and you feel so full—so damn full—that you end up coming again, clenching around her and groaning.  
  
By the time she’s done you’re oversensitive and gasping, the fullness too much. You whimper when she finally slips free of you, and watch, horrified, as her come seeps out of you, mixing into the water all around you.  
  
She slumps against you, finally releasing your throat, and from what you can tell, falls right back asleep.  
  
You blink down at her, appalled.  
  
“You have got to be kidding me.”  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
The rest of her mating season passes without issue. She takes you sometimes as often as three times a day after that first time, and slowly, you get used to the feeling. On the days you’re too sore, you show her other ways—taking her in hand and licking at her hole until she arches and comes dry.  
  
It’s fulfilling as hell, just having sex and sleeping all day—nice enough that you’re almost sad when it’s over.  
  
When you tell her so, she just shrugs at you and nuzzles into your arms. “I might be down for a repeat performance,” she tells you. “There ain’t nofin like heat season, but... what you did, the human thing. I could get behind that.”  
  
You laugh and laugh and laugh.  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
Things fade back into normalcy. You attend court with her and help her hunt for her mom. The first day that she presses a spear into your hands and says, “You better jab it with the pointy end ‘stead a me, got it, tuna?” your heart swells with warmth.  
  
Her people still look at you like you’re a barnacle stuck to their armpit, but you could care less.  
  
Dirk’s voice whispers in your head, every once in awhile. Quiet and unobtrusive like he’s sliding a book on stockholm syndrome into your lap.

He whispers, _What are you doing, Roxy?_  
  
You don’t know, but you think that you’re almost happy here—here with Meenah’s arms around you at night, her fingers braiding bones into your lengthening hair before council.  
  
You were never happy like this up there, not since you were little and Dirk helped you tend your garden in the sun.  
  
Eventually, his voice fades.  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
And then one day, out of the blue, Meenah goes, “I wanna see where ya come from, starfish.”  
  
Her fingers are stroking through your hair, peaceful as the two of you get, and you’re half in a doze. Her words wake you right up. “What do you mean?”  
  
She frowns down at you. “You came from that big tower, didn’t ya? I wanna see it.”  
  
“I- but it’s on land? You wouldn’t be able to come inside,” you say, your heart thundering beneath your ribs.  
  
She scoffs at you. “Brought ya back to life, didn’t I? Kissed ya back real good. You be thinkin’ I can't get my human legs on?”  
  
Well, that’s new information. But she’s still talking, going on about visiting her spider bitches some miles south of here. “They ain’t up where the dragons nest, but I gotta get my walk on somehow.”  
  
You blink. “Wait, there’s land still?” you ask, surprised.  
  
She gives you a look, that one where she’s trying to think of how to call you stupid without actually calling you stupid. “Where else are dragons gonna get their nest on? They sure ain’t water dragons. There ain’t a whole lotta land, but there’s enough out there for ma spider bitches to get by, and they hate water. Serket junior always be shoutin’ aboat the waters makin’ her silk soggy and ma Serket... well, that one’ll talk til’ her webs shrivel up.”  
  
You shake your head a bit, completely overwhelmed. “But- I thought the only monsters lived in the sea? I mean, w- I had a chunk of rock, so I figured the dragons had the same.”  
  
She laughs at you. “The ocean ain’t everyfin, angel fish. The horse-fellas, ramhead ladies, and the tinkerbulls up in their flooded grasslands, the slugmommas and the damn bee assholes in their hives near ma spider bitches, and we got all kinds a crabs and seagoats on da beach.”  
  
She nuzzles closer to you, nipping at the ring that you’d finally allowed her to poke through your nipple. “We- well, we can go visit ‘em, if ya really want. We don’t gotta stay down here til’ ya shrivel up or I get skewered by some pup.” She frowns and pokes at your belly, like maybe this time she’ll find something moving in there. You bat her hand away, trying not to grit your teeth. It’s been months since mating season—hell, next mating season will be coming up on them sooner or later—and you’ve accepted by now that either humans and fishpeople can’t breed or there’s something wrong with you. Thinking back on all the times that Dirk spilled inside of you, you’re willing to bet on the latter.  
  
Which... well, whatever. You aren’t gonna think about it, because it isn’t worth fretting. You accepted the day that she took you that you’d probably be the last female of your species. You plan on ignoring it until your brain thinks it matters.  
  
“—irst though, I wanna see your digs.”  
  
You shake yourself. “Sorry, what?”  
  
She frowns at you again, wrapping you up tighter like she thinks there’s something wrong with your brain. “I wanna see your digs,” she repeats. “Climb dat tower of yours and see how da monkeys lived.”  
  
You think about it, chewing on your lip as she resumes grooming your hair. There isn’t a damn thing that you can do to keep Meenah Peixes from something she wants, so you can either be honest with her now, or let her get surprised when your brother tries to kill her. Considering the fact that the latter will likely get him run through, you think that it’s probably for the best to go with the former.  
  
You sigh. “Meenah, I need to tell you something. Remember when I said I was the last human alive?”  
  
She gives you a suspicious look. “Yeah, what aboat it?”  
  
Deep breath. “I have a brother, back home, named Dirk.”  
  
She cocks her head at you, still unknotting your braids. “You got a mate?”  
  
You shake your head, then stop, and consider. “Not really? He’s like my hatchmate, but I guess since we’re the last of our kind, we were kind of mates.”  
  
She snorts. “You said were, treasure. He ain’t your mate no more if he’s stupid enough to lose you.”  
  
“He didn’t lose me! You drowned and fishnapped me!”  
  
She laughs at you, her finger snagging in a braid and making you wince. “ _Fishnapped_ ,” she chortles. “I like that.”  
  
After a moment, her chuckles die down. “And it’s all the same, tuna. I still found ya, and you ain’t his no more. You’re my treasure and I ain’t gonna let no monkey take ya away from me.”  
  
You nibble on your lip a little and long for a fish to skin or a spear to sharpen, _anything_ to do with your hands. “That’s what I mean, though. I take you up there, he’s gonna try to take me back.”  
  
At long last, her hands still in your hair. She jerks your chin around to face her, staring fiercely at you, her teeth bared. “Ain’t nobody gonna take you away from me, starfish. I’ll krill the stupid monkey if he tries.”  
  
You gasp in pain when she leans in to kiss you, her sharp teeth snagging on your lip. “But—” you start, and she shushes you with another kiss.  
  
When she pulls away again, she’s staring at you contemplatively, like she’s got some kind of idea. You doubt it’s a good idea.  
  
“But you don’t want me to krill him, do ya?” she purrs, nuzzling your cheek. When you shake your head, she grins. “Then I’ll just have ta steal him, same as I did you.”  
  
She kisses the tip of your nose as your heart freezes in your chest.  
  
For the first time in months, you’re afraid.  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
“Two treasures are always better than one,” she tells you later, standing in the middle of your childhood home with Dirk bleeding out before you.  
  
He gropes weakly for his sword and you take the chance to kick it to the side so Meenah doesn’t have to hit him again. She beams at you, ducking down to kiss you happily. She’s taller than you like this—her legs not quite as long as her tail, but they seem to go on forever anyway—so she has to duck down by quite a lot to actually get at your mouth, pulling at you until you fling your arms around her neck and go up on tiptoes. She makes a pleased sound in the back of her throat, rubbing circles into your hip with one hand and playing with the bones and trinkets braided into your hair with the other.  
  
On the floor, Dirk groans in pain, and your stomach knots up all over again.  
  
“You’re gonna let him die first, aren’t you,” you whisper against her lips, making sure he doesn’t hear you.  
  
She shrugs. “Easier ta bring him back than heal him now,” she tells you, unapologetic.  
  
You look down at your brother; like this, his shades crushed a few feet away from him, he looks broken and young. He’s nothing like the person you remember, stoic and strong even as you cried in his arms. Of the two of you, he’d always been the stronger one. You wonder if that’s still the case.  
  
You watch your brother die, Meenah’s arms wrapped around you.  
  
She shushes the sobs that surface when he finally lets out his last gurgling breath, chasing them away with kisses to your nose, lips, and eyelids.  
  
Then she gets up and kisses him back to life.  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  
Meenah keeps Dirk in golden chains in the corner of your room.  
  
He gives her no other choice after the fourth time that he tries to kill her.  
  
“Roxy, don’t you see?” he hisses one night, after she’s asleep in your arms. You’re sated and sore from when she’d taken you earlier, fucking you just a few feet from him, like she’d been trying to prove a point. And she’d proved it too, that you were hers now, body and soul, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.  
  
“You’re just a pet to her, Roxy,” he whispers fiercely, straining at his chains.  
  
You turn over, into her arms, and pretend you’re asleep.  
  
Eventually he’ll stop.


End file.
